The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2016 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on November 3, 2016, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

More than a campaign
biography, this graphic narrative traces the decline and possible resurgence of
liberalism within the Democratic Party.

The candidate for the
presidential nomination barely makes an appearance until more than a third of
the book has passed, as the introductory sections offer an incisive analysis of
just how far to the right the Democratic Party has drifted. Political
cartoonist and war correspondent Rall (Snowden, 2015,
etc.) asserts that the defeats of McGovern and Mondale, the one-term presidency
of Carter in between, and the ineffectual candidacy of Dukakis all served to
move the party away from its traditional liberal mandate toward the center.
Sanders was no one’s obvious choice to be the standard-bearer of a liberal
uprising, not even the candidate’s, but the times made him inevitable—at least
according to this book. As the party no longer accommodated positions such as
those in the Occupy movement and opponents to the Wall Street rescue, Sanders
decided that if no other candidate would give voice to that constituency, he
would. The latter half of the book traces his remarkable political rise, as he
defeated a six-term incumbent to become mayor of Burlington, “one of the great
upsets in Vermont political history,” and went on to represent his state as a
popular independent in both the House and the Senate. Rall’s analysis is
scathingly radical. He labels George W. Bush “the most radical right-wing
Republican of the modern political era,” dismisses Bill Clinton as a
“DINO—Democrat in Name Only,” and blasts “Obama’s stormtroopers” for the
violent dispersing of the nonviolent Occupy protestors. And Bernie? “If he was
a fringe kook, he was a popular one” as a senator, and though this biography
shows little confidence that Sanders will be nominated, let alone elected
president, it demonstrates why he’s been able to pose a greater challenge than
anticipated.

An effective, if
unapologetically partisan, primer on a strong voice from the left to counter
the Democrats’ rightward shift.

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